comScore: 10% increase in online 2013 holiday spending

While no one said the 2013 holiday spend would set the world on fire, the strength in consumer spending may be a surprise to some. According to comScore's tally the official online spend for the 2013 holiday season was 10% over 2012 spending. This even though the holiday season was shortened by nearly a week.

Non-travel related holiday spending reached $42.75 billion in 2013; the 2012 total rests at $38.912 billion. Along with the 10% increase comes a sign that most people are doing more shopping online and via mobile devices - there were 10 individual days during which people spent more than $1 billion online.

"Strong momentum coming out of Thanksgiving, in addition to heavy weekend buying, suggested we would meet or exceed expectations as long as momentum continued through the final week before Christmas. Unfortunately, the most recent week fell short of those expectations, and it looks like the final season growth rate will end up a few percentage points shy of what we had anticipated. In the end, I think we'll look back at this online holiday season as one where absolute dollar sales gains in consumer spending were held back by heavy retailer price discounting that occurred in an attempt to stimulate consumer demand, while at the same time, consumers weren't willing or able to increase their spending rate to fully compensate for the six-day shorter shopping period between Thanksgiving and Christmas," said Gian Fulgoni, comScore Chairman.

The top-gaining ecommerce categories for the 2013 holiday season included: